When thinking of starting an online store on Shopify, you may find yourself faced with a variety of challenges, questions and concerns. One thing you may be wondering is ‘Which Shopify plan is best for my online store?’. Selecting one may feel daunting, but don’t worry, we’ve created this guide to help. Shopify is a popular platform for a reason. Hosting over 1.7 million merchants, the platform is effective due to its scalability and flexibility with the different plans available on Shopify. Some of the most famous brands out there use Shopify including Tesla, Kylie Cosmetics and Gym Shark to name a few.
This article aims to deepen your understanding of Shopify, each of the plans you can choose from and how a marketing agency can help to improve your Shopify store results.
What is Shopify?
As discussed, Shopify is a website hosting platform that uses a subscription based system. It allows anybody to create an online store to sell their products. It also provides a pos system where you can sync your online transactions with physical in store ones to track your inventory and stock levels on any device.
As your Shopify store adapts and grows you will need different features and add on’s to make sure your site is user friendly. That’s why Shopify provides additional upgrades, plans and features to help you grow your business accordingly.
Which Shopify plans are available?
There are 3 main Shopify plans available called ‘Basic Shopify’, ‘Shopify’ and ‘Advanced Shopify’. We are going to be discussing each of these plans, the features of them and the costs to help you identify which plan is right for you. Luckily, when you sign up to Shopify, you are offered a 14 day free trial which allows you to set up your store. When the 14 day trial is up your store will be paused and you will not be able to continue working on it until you select a plan. Fortunately, your work will not be lost and once you select a plan you will be able to continue working on your store and begin selling your products or services.
Each plan offers a variety of features and because no specific plan works for every business, this article should help you to choose the best plan for your business.
Basic Shopify
The first plan we will be discussing is the ‘Basic Shopify’ subscription. We recommend this plan for small businesses and start-ups with an affordable monthly subscription charge of $29. This is one of the cheapest prices available to create a fully functional and effective ecommerce website. As with all Shopify plans, with the Basic Shopify subscription you are offered a standalone site and blog. Here are some of the benefits and features of Basic Shopify:
- You can sell an unlimited number of products
- You can create 2 staff accounts
- Affordable
What we like the most about the plans is that it is easy to upgrade to a different plan as your business grows. This makes the platform adaptable, flexible and scalable.
Shopify
The next plan up from the Basic Shopify option costs $79 per month and is called ‘Shopify’. This plan is ideal for businesses ready to start upscaling their business. We recommend this plan for small-medium sized businesses. This is because with this subscription plan you will have access to all of the features available with basic Shopify as well as some additional features. These features include:
- Up to 5 staff accounts
- Access to professional reports
Shopify professional reports is data relating to your customers’ interaction with your online store. This allows you to gain a better understanding of your customers purchasing habits and behaviours. This is beneficial for your business as you can update your store to increase conversions and try new methods to improve your site traffic and sales.
Advanced Shopify
As your business continues to grow, Shopify has created a plan to allow your business to do so with their Advanced Shopify plan. As your store expands and your customer base grows, you will need to be able to manage the spike in store traffic. The advanced plan will allow you to do this and although this pricing plan is more expensive, the features make it worth it. Here are some of the features that come with the advanced Shopify plan:
- All of the features of Basic Shopify and the Shopify plan
- Up to 15 staff accounts
- Advanced report builder
Additional features to the Shopify Plans
We have covered the 3 main Shopify subscriptions available and the features of each. We wanted to delve deeper into two additional plans, Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus.
Shopify Lite
Shopify Lite is a plan that includes access to the shopify admin. It is available for merchants who are wanting to sell in person via POS or merchants who want to add a ‘buy’ button to their existing website. Although Shopify lite comes with some great additional features, you cannot build an online store with it. It is affordable costing only $9 per month and some of the featured included with Shopify lite are:
- View reports
- Product management
- Order management
- Issue gift cards
- Split bills
Shopify Plus
Shopify plus is an advanced commerce platform which is designed to suit high volume, enterprise level businesses. At its core, what makes Shopify Plus advanced is that it can take more than basic systems do, this adds more control and more customisation. Shopify plus costs $2000 per month but comes with additional features and benefits. Some of the benefits of upgrading to Shopify Plus include:
- Up to 18% higher conversion rate
- 60% faster checkout
- Future proof (built in AR, video and 3D media)
- Customised checkout
- Localised shopping experiences for different languages and currencies etc.
Summary
We hope this article has deepened your understanding of the different plans available and helped you to choose which subscription is best for your business. Find out how we can help you to improve your Shopify store, boost site traffic and increase your conversions with digital marketing.
Our Digital Team is an official Shopify Partner providing specialist SEO services, social media advertising, email marketing and more. Contact us to find out more and arrange a free 15 minute consultation.